I’ve owned my Galaxy gear for roughly a month now, and have to say that it is honestly a surprise. I was sketchy at first because of the $300 price tag and how much would I be using this, but honestly, I’ve used this thing more times a day than I thought possible. I get tons of notifications a day, and now instead of pulling into my pocket to grab my phone, I just flip the wrist and see what notification popped up. The 1.6-inch AMOLED screen is crystal clear, sharp and gives off great colors. Here’s my take on the Samsung Galaxy Gear…
Performance and Battery Life
The 800MHz processor is more than sufficient enough to handle all of the various tasks. The touchscreen is very responsive, and there’s very little lag or stutter when navigating or opening apps.
As for battery life, on average, you should get anywhere between a day and a half to two days of solid use. Out of habit, I generally charged the Gear every night, but it’s comforting to know that it will still work most (if not all) of the next day in case I forget to plug it in. Despite Samsung’s watch having a 315mAh battery, which is pretty large for a device in this category, much of the reason it doesn’t hold up to other smartwatches is because the Gear has a lot going on. Its screen is colorful and has a much higher resolution, and when you throw in other features like S Voice and third-party options, it’s not terribly surprising to see the Gear’s battery drain a lot faster than the competition.
When it comes to call quality, the speaker phone is just right. It’s not crystal clear but it is well enough quality to make out easily what the other person is telling you. I’ve made three calls using my Gear so far, and twice were in the car and both times I asked the caller how did I sound, and both responses were “you sound fine”. Both of the callers did not notice that I was talking on a bluetooth device.